


From the Ground Up

by cobalamincosel



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Anal Sex, Boys Kissing, Existential Crisis, Fluff and Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-21
Updated: 2019-04-21
Packaged: 2020-01-23 03:17:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18541189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cobalamincosel/pseuds/cobalamincosel
Summary: “What brings you to this island?” Kun says, turning his body to face Johnny fully.Johnny tries to work how he can phrase what he wants to say without sounding pretentious, but Kun then says not unkindly, “Are you here to find yourself, too?”“It’s okay,” Kun says, pushing off of the tree, transferring the tattered book to his right hand. “I get it. I’m here for that too, I guess.”-Kun and Johnny are two lonely strangers who meet at a beach. They don’t believe in fate but maybe they should.





	From the Ground Up

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lunalius](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lunalius/gifts).



Johnny sees Kun for the first time on his fourth day at the beach, and it stops him in his tracks.

He has no idea who the man sitting under the tree is, but one look is enough to have Johnny wanting to sit next to him for the rest of the day under the scorching sun.

He doesn’t, though. He can’t seem to gather the courage to do so. He’s nobody, and the man is nobody. They’re just two people on a secluded beach, in the middle of an unforgiving summer, and there’s no reason that Johnny can think of to even approach him.

Johnny finds a spot under a different tree, lays his little woven mat on the ground, something Taeyong had given him from one of his travels. “It’s a _banig,_ ” Taeyong had said. “You can take it on your trip with you!”

It’s high tide, the beach front long and sprawling. Peaceful.

It’s cliché that he’s here to find himself, whatever that means, but after having to deal with a job he didn’t like, in a city he didn’t like, going about his days like he didn’t have purpose, Sicheng had agreed that Johnny needed time off.

“It’s about time you did, Johnny,” Sicheng had said after giving him the paperwork he needed to fill out to file his leave. “You never have.”

So that’s how he finds himself sitting on a woven mat, trying to journal his emotions, and decidedly trying not to think about how this is the first vacation he has taken in nearly four years.

The sea-salt wind picks up, the waves crashing on the shoreline like a metronome.

Johnny closes his eyes, tries to focus on the rhythm of it. It works for a while.

But when he opens his eyes and looks over at the man who had caught his eye earlier, Johnny sees him whip his head in the other direction, like he had been caught staring.

Johnny files it away.

He decides it’s high time to get in the water, so he goes, dives in quickly as soon as his shirt is shed and trapped under his journal, safe on the mat, phone purposely left in his room so as not to give him anything to worry about.

He doesn’t see when the man picks up his things, and leaves.

\--

It’s sunset when Johnny sees the beautiful man again, leaning against the same tree he had sat under earlier in the day. He has a book in hand with a beaten up cover, one that Johnny can’t place.

Without realising it, Johnny’s feet have taken him closer to this stranger.

Johnny has no pickup lines, no game plan, nothing except for, “Hello,” and a megawatt smile.

The stranger looks up at him, at Johnny’s open demeanour, his bright eyes. Makes the judgment call.

“Hello,” the man replies, gives him a small smile. Ducks his head. Looks back up.

“I’m Johnny,” he says, holding his hand out. What is he doing? What is he _doing?_ He didn’t think this through. Why did he want to say hello in the first place? What—

“I’m Kun,” the man replies, taking his hand in a firm handshake, one squeeze before letting go.

Johnny has no script. He doesn’t even know why he decided to approach in the first place. How does he even make small talk with someone? When all he has going for him is, ‘I thought you were the most beautiful man I had ever seen which is why I’m saying hi.’ Johnny cant say that.

“What brings you to this island?” Kun says, turning his body to face Johnny fully. The sun stretches itself out, drapes itself across the water, reaches its fingers out over Kun’s skin, his hair, his eyelashes that fan out against his cheeks when he blinks. Time stills for Johnny.

Johnny tries to work how he can phrase what he wants to say without sounding pretentious, but Kun then says not unkindly, “Are you here to find yourself, too?”

Johnny swallows around his words. Nods once, twice. The sun glints off of Kun’s teeth as he smiles.

“It’s okay,” Kun says, pushing off of the tree, transferring the tattered book to his right hand. “I get it. I’m here for that too, I guess.”

“What, you’re here to eat, pray, love?” Johnny responds, falling into step with him.

The low tide barely reaches their feet.

“I’ve done the first two, but that last one is pretty tough to do,” Kun says, left hand in the pocket of his khaki shorts. “No one really tells you if you’re supposed to learn to love yourself here or someone else.”

Johnny hides his shock at how easily Kun’s words flow out, how it seems like he has not filter, nothing to hide.

“I think it’s supposed to be about loving yourself,” Johnny says. “At least, that’s what the self-help books told me.”

Kun hums quietly, looks out over at the sun whose last slivers try to keep their grip on the calm ocean’s surface.

“What do the books say about loneliness?”

Johnny thinks about that, the little articles he’s read, the attempts at conversation over dating apps that never seemed to lead anywhere, the quiet of his one-bedroom, the endless consumption of media fill the white noise of his days.

“They don’t really help you with that.”

They make their way to the brightly lit dining hall. Johnny feels like there’s a buzzing energy in the air that surrounds the two of them, something magnetic that he can’t place or explain.

“Do you maybe wanna sit together for dinner?” Kun asks expectantly. Johnny smiles.

“Did you ever see the movie Before Sunrise?” Johnny asks when they find a table in the corner for two and settle in.

Kun nods.

“You think that’s gonna be us tonight?”

Johnny blushes. He doesn’t know this man.

But he wants to.

“It could be us tonight,” he replies.

They pause to place their orders, and talk while they wait.

“So Johnny,” Kun starts as their food is served. “What’re you trying to escape from?”

Kun really just goes for the heart of it, it seems. Johnny is completely fascinated.

“You ever just wake up one day and think, I have done nothing worth anything at all?”

Kun’s eyes harden. Johnny catches the clench of his fist on the table, the strain on his jaw. He’s touched a nerve, and he regrets it.

“I’m sorry, was that too—“

“It’s okay,” Kun replies. “Yeah, that’s what I’m running away from, too, Johnny.”

Kun’s hand relaxes. Jaw loose.

Kun eats meticulously, Johnny notes. Small portions shoved onto a fork carefully with a knife. The different little groups of food don’t touch. An equal amount every serving before he brings the fork to his mouth. Gentle dabs of the napkin to his lips. Repeat.

“Can we have a rule?” Johnny asks, digging into his own food as neatly as possible.

Kun raises his eyebrow. Johnny thinks about wanting to press his lips to the mole that rests there. Shoved the thought away. They don’t know each other.

Yet.

“What’s the rule?” Kun replies.

“Can we pretend that this is all the time we have to get to know each other?” Johnny starts. “I don’t know what it is, but the moment I saw you this morning, it’s all I wanted to do: talk to you, get to know you. You’re a complete stranger but—“

“It feels like gravity?”

Johnny smiles at him, and Kun smiles back.

“Feels like it, yeah,” Johnny responds.

“I saw you this morning, and it was the same. Like I knew that you were going to factor into today somehow,” Kun says softly. “Guess we’ll just have to keep talking to figure out why.”

They eat in companionable silence that is punctuated by small bursts of conversation. Johnny learns that Kun is here for only two nights, while he still has another three full evenings at the resort until he has to make the trip back to the city.

The thought makes him ache.

Kun used to work with a group of people who had originally claimed to be working towards halting the effects of climate change, but instead rub elbows with the rich, leaving much to be desired in terms of actual output and concrete change. “Disillusioned and burnt out,” Kun says.

 

“Do you see now why I reacted the way I did earlier?” Kun asks as he takes a sip from his coffee.

Johnny’s angry on his behalf. He’s worked himself to the bone the last 4 years, day in, day out like his time chasing paper meant life or death. He really just wanted to make rent.

He’s never really stood for something. At least Kun has. He tells his companion as much.

“Standing for something got me nowhere Johnny,” Kun says tiredly. His shoulders hunch in on himself. “It’s really not that great.”

Johnny looks down at his folder hands.

“It is.”

“You have something to tether you to this world, do you get me?” Johnny says, staring intently at Kun. “You’re not just floating aimlessly like a jackass. Maybe you just need to find a new group to work with.”

Johnny knows that’s reductive. An oversimplification. But still.

“I’ve never stood for anything, not really. I’ve never— I’ve never donated to a cause, or stood in the rain to protest, or anything like that. I’ve lived my entire life kind of just coasting through and hoping for the best. Working without asking myself why I was doing it.”

Johnny aches. He’s never said this out loud. His shame weighs so much.

“You and I,” Kun says. “Two sides of the same coin, Johnny.”

They have the waiter charge the meal to their respective rooms. Most of the dining hall has cleared out. Only them and one other pair remain.

It’s clear from their body language that neither one of them wants to part ways yet, so Johnny glances at his watch, sees that it reads 10:37 in the evening, and says, “Let’s walk around?”

He holds his arm out, offers it up like a gift.

Kun links his arm though Johnny’s.

They’re sitting on cold sand, back at the seashore where they first met. The moon hangs low, full and resplendent. In the moonlight, Kun looks blue. Johnny wonders if he does, too.

The wind picks up.

Kun’s hair blows against his forehead.

“Why did you ask about loneliness?”

Kun is thoughtful, quiet.

“I’ve spent my entire career having to talk to people, establish ties, get conversations going. But at the end of the day, I come home & I feel wrung out, like nothing I’ve said has made any mark on anyone.”

The ocean glitters. Miles of diamonds.

Johnny clears his throat. The cold air has made it scratchy.

“People talk to me all the time, leave things to get done on my desk without having to explain because I already know what they need me to do,” Johnny says. “Clockwork. All of it. I’m efficient. But empty.”

“Empty?” Kun parrots back, turning to look at Johnny. “Hardly.”

Johnny huffs out a small laugh: mirthless, hollow.

“Extremely so. What’s a life when you just keep on keeping on, no direction?” Johnny replies.

His hands are starting to grow cold.

“I am lonely,” he says.

Kun rises, brushing sand off of his shorts.

“God, we’re so depressing right now,” he says, and holds a hand out for Johnny to take, which he does. Kun leans back, a counterpoint to Johnny’s weight, and Johnny stumbles up, a good half a head taller than Kun.

“Let’s fix that.”

Johnny doesn’t know what he expects from Kun, but he definitely doesn’t expect him to step back and pull his shirt off.

“What—“

“Race you,” Kun says, his eyes alight. Glowing. The moonlight seems to love his face as much as the sunlight did hours ago.

Johnny has no chance to protest before the same gravity that pulled him to Kun in the first place has him pulling his shirt off and racing after the madman, running off into the dark water, hissing through his teeth when the cold hits his bare skin.

“Fuck!” Kun laughs. “Fuck!”

They’re both thrashing in the water, screaming as every nerve comes alive, laughing at the sheer audacity of the entire situation.

Kun wades closer to Johnny, a smile so radiant, Johnny can barely stand it.

“I don’t believe in fate,” Kun says, breath heavy, teeth clacking.

“Neither do I,” Johnny replies. “I think we just happened to be two lonely people on a beach at the same time.”

Kun is smiling up at him.

“How about love at first sight, then?” Kun asks, cheeky, like he knows he’s being ridiculous.

“Don’t believe in it either,” Johnny replies, smiling widely at him, and Kun throws his head back, a startled laugh.

“Thank God,” Kun replies. “I don’t think I’d be able to trust you if you did.”

They’re so close, a hair’s breadth away.

“Two lonely people on a beach, huh?”

Johnny pulls away, takes Kun by the hand, drags him out further so only their heads are bobbing in the water.

“What do you want out of this life?” Johnny asks, watching Kun wade in the water, legs kicking out from under him.

“I want to wake up every morning and know that I matter somehow. To myself, to someone else.”

It’s a short answer, an honest one.

“Can I kiss you?” Johnny asks, his heart racing in his chest, a drumbeat out of sync with the waves that thrash softly around them. “It’s okay if you’d rather I didn’t,” he adds, his eyes never leaving Kun’s.

Two lonely people on a beach.

“D’you think you can wait?” Kun asks.

“I can wait,” Johnny responds, voice deep, sincere. A promise. Reassurance.

Kun nods, whispers, “Thank you.”

Kun makes a move closer to Johnny.

“Is this ok?” Kun asks, hands on either side of Johnny’s ribs.

“Yeah, it is.”

They stand there, arms around each other, water lapping at their skin as Kun rests his forehead on Johnny’s shoulder. Johnny can’t even remember the last time he had held someone like this. Too long, it seems. Much too long.

“You never answered your own question,” Kun says, hand stroking over Johnny’s clavicle. There are droplets of water on his eyelashes. Johnny wipes them away with his thumb.

“I want to feel like I’m alive,” he replies. “I want to feel light. None of this-- this survival bullshit.”

They head back to shore a little after that, dripping on the sand that sticks to their feet, cakes over and clumps together. Johnny’s watch reads 12:37.

This moment is make or break, it feels like.

They still have so much to learn about each other.

“Do you—“

“Yes.”

When they arrive at Johnny’s door, Kun stands very close to him, and as soon as they walk through it, Kun is on Johnny in an instant, his lips catching Johnny’s like violent water on a jagged rock face.

There’s a taste of desperation in it, from both of them, something raw.

They claw at each other’s clothing, shirts and shorts and underwear coming off layer by layer, movement singular and coordinated despite how sloppy their kisses are.

 

They’ve spent the entire evening trading stories about their hurts and their triumphs and their disappointments and here, here in a secluded resort during an off-peak season, in Johnny’s bedroom, their hunger crests.

 

Johnny had asked if they could pretend that this was all the time they had left with each other, and Kun takes that to heart, his tongue slipping into Johnny’s mouth easily, his teeth grasping for purchase on Johnny’s bottom lip, making the taller man groan into the kiss, and bring Kun closer to his chest.

 

They make their way into the shower, the warm spray of water hitting them both, rinsing away salt and sand. Johnny has Kun pressed up against the wall, his hands bringing Kun’s hips to grind against his own, and Kun breaks their kiss to gasp out as his hardness brushes against Johnny’s erection over and over.

 

Johnny is a starving man. All he wants it to devour the sounds that Kun makes as he works his fingers over the head of Kun’s cock, moans that he swallows, messy kisses and teeth that bite into the soft junction of Johnny’s neck.

 

Kun is sucking a hickey into Johnny’s skin while the taller man groans out, Kun’s hands gently parting the cheeks of his ass, one finger stroking over the tight rim of muscles that has Johnny thrusting against Kun’s hip.

 

“How do you want it?” Kun asks through his haze, panting his breaths out softly.

 

“Bed,” Johnny replies, catching Kun’s swollen lips again. “You inside me.”

 

Kun groans into another kiss before they pull away to towel themselves off and catch their breath.

 

Johnny’s mind blanks out when they make their way to the bed, Kun gently guiding him to lie down and using the pillows to raise Johnny’s hips.

It blanks the moment Kun settles on the bed between his spread legs, a white noise that raises in volume when Kun swirls his tongue around Johnny’s entrance and works a finger into him.

 

Later, when Kun slides into him, Johnny bites through the burn of it. It’s been so, so long since he’s been with anyone, but it’s so good, so fucking good he nearly comes the moment Kun bottoms out, hitting Johnny’s prostate in the process.

 

The room is sweltering hot despite the air conditioning, and Johnny doesn’t hold back, letting Kun know exactly how good it is for him, using his long legs to bring Kun impossibly closer to him after every thrust.

 

Sweat gathers on Kun’s forehead, his elbows braced on either side of Johnny’s head as he picks up the pace, grunting, muttering “fuck, you feel so good,” and “you’re so— fuck— so tight,” and Johnny is suspended in space.

His entire body feels like it’s disintegrating, like every force that has worked to keep his atoms together have decided to let go, and when he comes, Kun ramming into his prostate over and over again, his release coating his belly, Kun’s chest, Johnny nearly blacks out.

Nearly.

That is until Kun swipes a finger through his cum and takes it into his mouth.

 

Jesus Christ.

 

Johnny’s hold on reality starts to slip, focusing only on the last few syncopated thrusts of Kun’s hips until Kun himself is coming, coming, collapsing on top of him.

—

When their breathing steadies, when Kun has discarded the condom & brought over two damp towels for the both of them to use, when they’re cleaned up & the clock reads 4:13 am, Johnny makes a decision.

“You know how you talked about gravity?”

Kun perches himself on his elbow.

Kun nods, traces the tips of his fingers over the expanse of Johnny’s bare chest to rest over the point where Johnny’s heart beats the strongest. He presses his fingers down into the skin.

“What about it?” Kun asks.

Johnny steels himself.

“What do you say about taking chances?”

“You’re going to have to be a little more specific than that,” Kun responds, eyes flicking up to meet Johnny’s gaze. He looks like he’s bracing himself for something. The lines on his face tense.

“What I’m saying is: take a chance on me.”

Kun’s smile looks like he’s about to tease Johnny for saying something so corny, so Johnny beats him to the punch.

“I know how I sound, I know it sounds crazy,” Johnny says. “But you and I have been looking for something, and this can’t just be a one-off thing, Kun.”

Kun leans in, brings his lips to the spot between Johnny’s furrowed brows.

“I’m going to ignore the ABBA reference you just made,” Kun says. “But okay.”

Okay. Like it’s simple.

“It is that simple,” Kun says, reading Johnny’s mind.

They fall asleep before sunrise.

Johnny wakes up to an empty bed, a note on his bedside table, a cellphone number, and a keycard. He finds Kun at breakfast an hour later, sitting outside the hall with his book perched on his knee.

"You're sitting like a child," Johnny says.

"I'm bisexual. This is how we sit."

The response startles a laugh out of Johnny, and it makes a rush of affection surge up from in his chest, compelling him to lean down and press a small kiss to Kun's temple. Kun tears his eyes away from his novel to look at Johnny better, smile gentle on his face.

Johnny hazards placing another kiss to the mole under Kun's eyebrow, and Kun tilts his head up to give him access to his lips, something Johnny is grateful for.

Johnny had expected the morning to mar the ease of the previous night, but Kun has brewed coffee waiting for him.

"I know you take yours black," Kun says, bringing his own coffee to his lips, eyes still on the novel.

"Did you sleep well?" Johnny asks, skirting around the topic of why Kun had felt he had to leave at all.

"I can hear what you're not saying, Johnny," Kun smiles.

Johnny stills, his worry showing in the wringing of his fingers over his empty plate.

"I needed to use the bathroom," Kun laughs, a sound from his belly deep and full. "I wasn't about to do that in yours, especially since I'm into you."

Johnny ducks, hides his embarrassment.

"How are you real?" Johnny asks in wonder, shaking his head in disbelief.

"What do you mean?" Kun responds, raising his eyebrow again.

"You," Johnny starts. "You're easy--"

"Wow, thanks--"

"No! I mean! I mean, you're so easy to be around. Like I've known you all my life."

"Maybe," Kun says, holding his index finger to his chin in an exaggeration of being deep in thought. "Maybe we're reincarnated souls destined to be together in every lifetime."

Johnny knows he's being mocked, but he can't bring himself to hold it against  
Kun.

Kun reaches his hand over to stroke his thumb over the back of Johnny's.

"I'm kidding," Kun says kindly.

"I know," Johnny replies, turns his hand over so they are palm to palm.

"But I know what you mean," Kun adds. "It's that gravity again. Funny, that."

They venture out later in the day, a mutual dare to do things they would otherwise not have done if they had remained on their own for the rest of their stay. Johnny gets on a jet ski, Kun goes parasailing, and the two of them hold hands while they snorkel in the sanctuary.

Over dinner, hidden in a booth together, they agree to spend a while with their respective journals to just collect themselves.

Kun leaves in the morning, and Johnny attempts to pull a huge romantic gesture and claim that he's leaving with Kun, to which Kun responds with, "No."

"Your entire stay is paid for, you're not going to waste it," Kun says, carefully rolling up his clothing while Johnny sits crossed-legged on his bed, pouting but trying very hard to hide it.

"But-"

"Johnny," Kun says with finality. "I'll be there at the airport to fetch you."

-

The sun rises too soon, Johnny thinks, as the first rays filter into the room through the windows of his balcony. Kun stirs in his arms. Johnny sees a freckle on his shoulder, another mole on his neck. Hopes that whatever force brought them together keeps doing so after this.

The kiss they share before Kun leaves on a small coaster back to the airport is one that tells Johnny, "I'll be there." It stings when Kun bites down, his attempt at being playful, but also his way of laying claim. A reminder that the last 48 hours haven't been a fever dream.

Johnny doesn't have an epiphany over the remainder of his own trip to this place, but he does have a game plan. It's something.

"What's something that used to make you feel alive then?"

"Art," Johnny had replied, and then cringed at how he must have sounded.

But Kun had said, "Okay, write that down." So he had.

They'd both made an attempt at a rough draft of a rough draft of a plan for what was waiting for them back in the city. Johnny figured they had to start somewhere.

They. Not just him.

Talk about taking chances.

When Johnny lands, bags in hand, phone barely escaping its third fall from his walk off the plane and out into arrivals, Kun is here, gigantic sign in hand, shouting "Johnny! Johnny!" and waving him over.

God, Johnny just might believe in love at first sight after all.

Johnny sweeps him up in his arms, lifts Kun off of the ground, spins him around like every stupid Hollywood rom-com he has ever seen, and Kun can't contain his laughter, hands coming to clap on Johnny's shoulders to steady himself given he's 3 feet in the air.

Two lonely people on a beach. Johnny can't believe it. Has never believed in magic, or fate, had stopped believing in God years ago, but when Kun throws his arms around Johnny's neck, standing on tiptoes to kiss him, Johnny thinks he has to reassess his faith in the unknown.

"You ready?" Kun asks, taking one of Johnny's bags in his hand to free up Johnny's and lace his fingers through them.

It's a loaded question. He knows this. Knows that Kun knows this.

"Yeah, I'm ready."

The sunlight caresses both their faces in welcome.


End file.
